Current cellular technology fails to provide a fool-proof method or system enabling a user to detect if a user's phone has been dropped and to determine where the phone is located. The user can call their phone, but no one might hear it ring and no one might answer it even if they do hear it. Additionally, by the time a user realizes that their phone has been dropped or misplaced, the battery could potentially drain making any user call to the missing or misplaced phone essentially useless. If a user drops their phone, there is currently no way to detect this event. If the user later picks up the phone, this event cannot be detected either. Furthermore, current technology fails to account for battery thresholds and location in making a smart decision whether to enable a missing phone to report its location.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,796,338 issued Aug. 18, 1998 to Aris Mardirossian, for example, discusses a two part system including a transmitter-receiver pair where the transmitter is attached to the cell phone and the receiver is contained in a pager like device that is worn by the user. Thus, this approach requires that the user carry an extra electronic “gadget” which is highly undesirable. Also, Mardirossian's invention provides a delayed response because it waits until the received signals (at the device worn by the user) drop below a certain threshold or are not received for a predetermined period of time. Thus, if a user were to drop their cell phone, a few minutes could pass before they are notified of the event.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,578,991 issued Nov. 26, 1996 to Erica Scholder discusses providing a triggered alarm immediately after a portable computer is removed from its designated spot. However, if the user leaves the portable computer behind, the alarm would not trigger and thus the user would not be certain of the location of their device until some time later. Neither reference provides a way for the loss/theft prevention system to determine the location of the misplaced device or a way for the user to actively query the misplaced device to obtain information regarding its whereabouts. Other references discuss tilt switches and man-down devices that are designed to provide an alert or a signal if a radio remains in a predetermined position such as a horizontal orientation. Again, such devices do not effectively provide loss or theft prevention and further fail to provide location information either automatically or upon an active query. Another system known as the OnStar system from GM provides a combination of GPS receiver and cell phone, coupled to the vehicle's electronics. The GPS receiver is constantly tracking the vehicle's position, as long as GPS coverage is provided. When the air bag deploys (an event triggered by an accelerometer mounted on the vehicle), the cell phone is automatically activated to place a call to the OnStar dispatch center, whereupon the vehicle's location is reported. The OnStar system cannot automatically determine if the user's car has been lost or stolen. Instead, the driver must report whether the car has been stolen or lost. Also, while the OnStar system does optionally provide a cell phone capability to the user, the cell phone is not portable and inherently coupled to the vehicle. Moreover, the accelerometer sensor in OnStar is used to trigger an immediate call to the dispatch center without a corresponding analysis of the acceleration profile for distinct characteristics determinative of an action such as a phone drop or loss.